Robot climbing times

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by ENeyman

Most of the time, 341 would shoot the two preloads before getting the two from the bridge. However, when against another robot who went for the bridge in auton (27, 233), they would go to the bridge first, intentionally taking the penalty.

Also, 365 would take the additional ball in auton too.

To be clear, we always hoped not to take the penalty when we did this. A lot of the time, one or more balls would not happen to roll into our intake and we'd leave the bridge loaded with 3 balls. But sometimes all of them did. We were never carded for doing it, but on a couple of occasions people expressed some displeasure that we were setting up the bot to incur a foul.

What choice did we have though? Risk a 3 point penalty and then score 6 points with the extra ball (EV +3)? Or don't go for the bridge at all, and give our opponents 12 free points (EV -12)?

IMO, a game mechanic that makes it mathematically advantageous to just eat the penalty is (a) designed to be exploited and/or (b) poorly thought out.